Double Monocle posted:

Can anyone enlighten us on the netcode for Dark Souls?
Cause thats my biggest complaint about demons souls. The lag.

I never experienced any lag myself in Demon's Souls, but as with all online games, your mileage will vary. Dark Souls uses Peer to Peer this time with a master server to find and connect people together.

fivetwo posted:

Yeah, they really had to work hard and sacrifice a lot to squeeze that whole 3.7gb onto one dual layer DVD.

e: drat all the people reporting finding the game early! The only places to even get games around here are all the big chains that won't break street date, and the only little shop that would have done something like that closed down a few months ago.

My local Gamestop is doing a midnight release, more for Rage and whatever sport game is being released, but it still means I can pick up Dark Souls at midnight. I'm gonna be a total nerd and take the day off work and enjoy this.

Someone was talking about this earlier, that particular streamer got a glitch during one of the boss fights where (not really spoilers, but...) the boss fell through the floor and died a bit later without any interaction from the player.

actionjackson posted:

To be honest, I've never played a game of this genre before. Should I not even bother with this or the prequel?

Like Smelly said, you might want to check out Demon's Souls first due to it only costing $20 and helps you get a feel for what Dark Souls will be like. Both games will play similarly, but with Dark Souls being more open-ended.

The gameplay is a mix between Zelda, Monster Hunter and Oblivion with a lot of challenge and a good deal of punishment for failure (but failing is not as bad as it first looks). If any of that sounds appealing, give the games a shot.

The.GreyWolf posted:

Yeah, he shot one arrow, and the thing died. The stream went ballistic when that happened.

In regards to the game: Do you like dying a lot? Do you like a high but usually fair difficulty?

Not usually. I do like Zelda as the other poster mentioned but I generally like games where I can adjust the difficulty. I also get somewhat intimidated by more complicated games, which this seems to be in terms of all the different classes, builds, items, weapons, etc. I'm also used to having checkpoints. Trying to rent it sometime is probably the best option for me.

Funkmaster General posted:

Someone was talking about this earlier, that particular streamer got a glitch during one of the boss fights where (not really spoilers, but...) the boss fell through the floor and died a bit later without any interaction from the player.

So the moral here is that, if you find a boss just too drat challenging and can't find a way past it, just keep beating at it, because sooner or later it's bound to just glitch out.

actionjackson posted:

Not usually. I do like Zelda as the other poster mentioned but I generally like games where I can adjust the difficulty. I also get somewhat intimidated by more complicated games, which this seems to be in terms of all the different classes, builds, items, weapons, etc. I'm also used to having checkpoints. Trying to rent it sometime is probably the best option for me.

The checkpoint thing won't be an issue. The Bon Fires are the fix to the complaints players had with Demon's Souls, with having to do all of that running back to a boss and killing everything over again.

I said come in! posted:

The checkpoint thing won't be an issue. The Bon Fires are the fix to the complaints players had with Demon's Souls, with having to do all of that running back to a boss and killing everything over again.

Farming is going to be a hell of a lot easier now as well, no more long rear end load times after killing the enemies you're farming.

I said come in! posted:

The checkpoint thing won't be an issue. The Bon Fires are the fix to the complaints players had with Demon's Souls, with having to do all of that running back to a boss and killing everything over again.

I suppose, but I was talking about Demon's Souls since that's a lot cheaper

Gyoru posted:

Yeah, Demon's Souls only sold 23,000 units during its first week in Japan in comparison. Dark Souls blew past 250,000 units in only 2-3 days.

Media Create puts Demons Souls first week sales at 40K, which of course does nothing to lessen the impressiveness of the first week Dark Souls sales. Supposedly the first week Dark Souls sales are very close to the lifetime sales of Demons Souls in Japan.

Smelly posted:

Farming is going to be a hell of a lot easier now as well, no more long rear end load times after killing the enemies you're farming.

While I suppose this is true, it does make getting to different parts of the world less easy. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but unless someone knows if there's a teleporter or something it doesn't look like you can go rocking through the bog and step out to play in the lava caves, should that be your wont.

Lotish posted:

While I suppose this is true, it does make getting to different parts of the world less easy. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but unless someone knows if there's a teleporter or something it doesn't look like you can go rocking through the bog and step out to play in the lava caves, should that be your wont.

I think I read that there's a way to fast travel if you get a certain item or something: that bigass raven dude will haul you around, supposedly

Lotish posted:

While I suppose this is true, it does make getting to different parts of the world less easy. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but unless someone knows if there's a teleporter or something it doesn't look like you can go rocking through the bog and step out to play in the lava caves, should that be your wont.

Fast travel is available between certain bonfires from what I have seen. Some areas do still require a bit of a trek to get to though.

Funkmaster General posted:

Not really. It isn't difficult for the same reasons ninja gaiden is, and it doesn't have the sort of progression zelda titles have.

Are there any walkthrough videos that really explain how the combat in this game works? I like the difficulty of games like ninja gaiden and bayonetta and have been wanting something new, but i can't tell if I will like this(I understand it isn't fast paced and linear like those.)

quote:

If you haven't already, read the OP. It does a pretty good job of describing the game. If you don't understand after that, I'm not sure we could explain it to you any better.

The screenshots and text aren't really helping me and I haven't played the games it has been compared to.

Edit - I get the exploration and how the world works parts, but the combat mechanics are still fuzzy to me.

Macksy posted:

Are there any walkthrough videos that really explain how the combat in this game works? I like the difficulty of games like ninja gaiden and bayonetta and have been wanting something new, but i can't tell if I will like this(I understand it isn't fast paced and linear like those.)

The screenshots and text aren't really helping me and I haven't played the games it has been compared to.

Edit - I get the exploration and how the world works parts, but the combat mechanics are still fuzzy to me.

You could just go watch some gameplay videos on youtube to get a general idea of the game.

They're very simple mechanics though, it's mainly about position and strategy than power/skill

Even the trash mobs will gently caress you up if you overextend yourself.

Macksy posted:

Are there any walkthrough videos that really explain how the combat in this game works? I like the difficulty of games like ninja gaiden and bayonetta and have been wanting something new, but i can't tell if I will like this(I understand it isn't fast paced and linear like those.)

The screenshots and text aren't really helping me and I haven't played the games it has been compared to.

Edit - I get the exploration and how the world works parts, but the combat mechanics are still fuzzy to me.

Some people early in the thread described it pretty well. You can lock on to enemies like in Zelda games (or not; there are times and places for both). Then you have a relatively basic selection of Block, Parry, dodge, regular attack, and strong attack (with some slight variations. Pressing forward+regular attack will perform a push or some other attack variant. Attacking after a roll or during a sprint will perform another attack, etc.). Some attacks may stun or interrupt some enemies; others won't. Fighting is all about watching attack patterns and waiting for safe openings to attack, and blocking or dodging while you wait for those openings. Probably most important is watching your stamina gauge- you almost always want to leave enough to block an attack or roll away, because enemies (all of them) can kill you extremely quickly and your healing is limited.

It's not like Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden though where you're jumping around like crazy dodging attacks and attacking willy-nilly. It's more tactical and methodical because each attack/block/dodge takes stamina that you have a limited amount of. You can certainly play with a fast dodging character, but it's still not as frantic as most other current third-person action games.